Auditory Temporal Processing and its Disorders

Jos J. Eggermont

Abstract

Sound is dynamic and as such has temporal and spectral content. The auditory system extracts the spectral aspects and the temporal ones in parallel in the cochlea and auditory nerve. For frequencies below about 1.5 kHz, the spectral and temporal representations of sound are potentially redundant and both represent the pitch of speech and music. Auditory temporal processing determines our understanding of speech, our appreciation of music, being able to localize a sound source, and to listen to a person in a noisy crowd. The underlying basic capabilities of the auditory system include precise r ... More

Sound is dynamic and as such has temporal and spectral content. The auditory system extracts the spectral aspects and the temporal ones in parallel in the cochlea and auditory nerve. For frequencies below about 1.5 kHz, the spectral and temporal representations of sound are potentially redundant and both represent the pitch of speech and music. Auditory temporal processing determines our understanding of speech, our appreciation of music, being able to localize a sound source, and to listen to a person in a noisy crowd. The underlying basic capabilities of the auditory system include precise representation of sound onsets and offsets, representing gap durations in sound, and being able to code fast amplitude- and frequency- modulations of sound. The co-occurrence of such onsets and modulations of sound determine auditory objects and allow separating those from other auditory streams. Problems with precise temporal representations of sound occur in auditory neuropathy and multiple sclerosis and lead to a mismatch between auditory sensitivity and speech discrimination. In dyslexia, specific language impairment and auditory processing disorders, similar problems occur early in life and set up additional cognitive speech processing problems. General neurological disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and epilepsy, display temporal processing deficits, generally though as a result of local and global neural synchrony problems. These synchrony problems are reflected in various cortical rhythm abnormalities and lead to cognitive dysfunctions. They also present auditory temporal processing problems, particularly in the amplitude modulation domain.

End Matter

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